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Additional Criteria

Environmental Education and sustainability programmes should demonstrate how they follow best practice or are evidence based, and have been evaluated in the last twelve months or demonstrate a plan for evaluation.

Organisations seeking funding for biodiversity projects should be focused on ecosystems in threatened environments, or that are severely depleted or under-protected, or key habitats for threatened or regionally endemic species, or areas of high ecological value that are subject to significant threats.

In line with biodiversity best practice, projects will be reviewed for priority actions (in this order: legal protection e.g. through covenant; physical protection e.g. pest/livestock control; habitat restoration or enhancement; habitat re-creation/reconstruction).

Where planting is a component of the project, the organisation needs to demonstrate they will use locally eco-sourced indigenous plants (if applicable).

Additional documents required

Please upload a management plan that has been endorsed by a relevant technical expert/s including details of landownership, any consents, permits or licences granted/needed for the project, and how you will monitor and evaluate the project.

For all the projects that involve action on the ground, you must provide a letter of support/approval from the landowner for the specific activity you are seeking funding for. This counts as one of the two letters of support you need to provide.

You don't need a letter of support from the relevant iwi/hapu. However, we encourage you to advise them by letter of your project.

For projects on habitat protection/restoration on private land, if covenant is not possible, we may ask you to obtain a letter from the landowner which states their commitment to maintain and keep the project in place for the duration of their ownership of the property and on sale of the property to talk to the new owner about the importance of the project.

What we don't fund

Rata Foundation will not fund projects that are, or are likely to be socially divisive for example organisations applying to fund projects which are political in nature.

Rata Foundation does not fund research except where the cost may legitimately be part of a project or programme evaluation.